And yes, you did everything right in trying to use the Reinstallation CD.

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Okay, I must be a glutton for punishment.

I followed that link, and downloaded "Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2 Utility: Setup Disks for Floppy Boot Install." The computer has all the most recent windows updates, but the reinstallation CD is for SP1, am I downloading the wrong file? Anway, it said "dmio.sys" was corrupted, that setup could not continue, and I had to restart (twice).

I got some new floppies and a different computer to download the file and load them up to try again. :lick: :dead:

/edit I'm going to format each one of these disks, stuff keeps getting corrupted. *$#@&!

that's only ONE floppy, and once you get to the dos prompt, you can go from there, i used use it all the time for creating partitions, formatting, etc, before i'd do a FRESH install of xp...

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Hehe, I found that, too. I'm a bit of a noob at this, I've only reformatted one other computer ever, and it took little more than going into the bios and telling the CD to boot first (Inspiron 5100). This computer has been around for five years with nary a reformat, so it was due!

After formatting all six disks and loading SP2 on them I found out I needed SP1. I would venture to guess that some of these floppies haven't been used in over a year, some at all (who uses floppies anyways these days?). Anyway, I went back, loaded SP1 on the floppies from another computer, at the same time disk 4 was loading disk 3 was in the comp I was trying to fix.

no bother, but just a real quickie before you actually insert the cd, try it in a computer that NOT a dell computer and see what happens... i cant really be sure, maybe it'll happen, if its a bootable cd of course, that an error should come up stating that the computer you are tryin to install it on is not a dell computer, or something to that effect. as far as i remember, it has something to do with the software detecting what mobo ur using, and if its not dell, etc...
actually my toshiba backup cds are the same, if it's not toshiba, it aint installin...

Well, now my ass is really up a creek without a paddle! Setup was chugging along, I'd deleted the old partition completely and XP was loading from the CD. Apparently "hivedif.inf" was corrupted at "Line 0." :dead: :cry:

i came across it when i was trying to install xp pro on a comp which incidentally was a dell as it happens, and indeed it was a dell dimension 4100 (remembered the service tag, lol)- p3 933mhz, 128mb SD-RAM (NOT DDR, just in case ), so try switching around some sticks if you can, took me an awful lot of switching in and out parts and a lotta heartache before i finally found the cause!

i nearly forgot to include - GROUND URSELF AGAINST STATIC before trying that one, ok?

Well, I don't know WHAT happened, but just for a laugh I attempted reformatting after I received that "hivedef.inf" error. Somehow, without removing any RAM (or any other hardware alteration for that matter), the install went through fine!

Well, I don't know WHAT happened, but just for a laugh I attempted reformatting after I received that "hivedef.inf" error. Somehow, without removing any RAM (or any other hardware alteration for that matter), the install went through fine!

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thats not good man...

sounds to me like you might have a bad sector on your CD... get a working copy of it as soon as you can... also find a friend that has one, and do the same...

Dells can be tempermental especially if your using their CD vs a winXP CD...